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Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Tangled Bank

Welcome to the 30th edition of the Tangled Bank, a regular round up of the best blog writing on science and medicine. For those of you who are reading the Tangled Bank for the first time, here's how it works: every couple of weeks (and every week starting from this one), science bloggers send nominations for their favorite posts to the next host of the TB, who collates the posts, writes a little bit about each article, and organizes them into categories. The idea is to get a sampling of the varied and excellent science writing on the web, a 'blog-digest', if you will.

It's often thought that it is hard to write accurately and clearly about science, that if you emphasize one, you give up on the other. The posts in this installment should disabuse you of that notion. Since this is after all the GEOMblog, I have created a new twist; posts on mathematically oriented topics tend to be in short supply on the web, and physicists tend to be under-represented in the TB, so I have gone hunting for posts that I think represent a sample of some of the best in mathematical and physics writing. If you like what the authors have to say, add their blogs to your feeds, and visit their sites !

And away we go:

Evolution, ID and the great non-debate.

It is an unfortunate consequence of the times we live in that most science discussions tend to get bogged down in ID-related controversies. Thankfully PZ Myers has help swatting at the swarms of FUD that emanate from a certain building in Seattle. And by all accounts, he might have just acquired a new army. Phil Plait @ Bad Astronomypoints out that the ambitions of the Discovery Institute extend far beyond biology, and vows to fight the good fight. Ernest Millermakes a plea for all scientists (not just biologists) to speak out against creationist nonsense, and Orac gently tries to deprogram a 14 year old proud creationist. Josh Rosenau has a four part debate with William Dembski, to which my first response (BLINK!) was 'Mud wrestling with a pig....'

One might think that mathematicians are safe from this nonsense. But doesn't Godel's theorem imply that there is a limit to what computational and (if you believe quantum computing) physical processes can accomplish ? Does this not imply the existence of an intelligent designer ? Ok, just kidding....

But how does one really test the components of evolution ? After all, we can't wait a million years ! RPM provides an explanation of how biologists study evolution today. The Blinne Blog reminds us that religion and science are not mutually exclusive, and explains how an evangelical scientist views the ID controversy.

Mechanisms of Evolution

But enough controvery. How about some beautiful explanations of actual species evolution ? DarkSyd presents the story of whale evolution, complete with pictures of detailed bone structures (via an assist from PZ) and evolutionary trees. Although today is not Friday, (the traditional cat blogging day in the blogosphere), I cannot help pointing to DarkSyd's post on the evolution of cats: did you know that cats and mongooses (mongeese ?) are closely related ?

Arachibutyrophobic discusses the new and surprising finding that modifying a single gene in Drosophila can cause female flies to court other female flies. I remember this finding quite vividly because I first heard about it when on holiday recently, and my wife the biologist, who knew all about fru, was able to explain the finding in much greater detail than the original news report did.

David Pescovitz discusses new research on the evolution of the highly complex eye of the mantis shrimp. The mantis shrimp is the Bruce Lee of the ocean, known for having "the fastest kick in the animal kingdom".

A rather different 'survival of the fittest' is the (soon-to-be)annual goby massacre known as the Goby Assault Party. Read the article, at the Invasive Species Weblog, if only to be regaled with phrases like 'Goby Dick' and 'Goby Gallows'.

I have it on good authority that certain astronomers would like nothing better than to curl up with a book on dust. By examining different wavelenghts of light filtered through cosmic dust, astronomers can infer all kinds of things about far-away star systems. EGAD tells us about the balloon BLAST that was just launched by the National Scientific Balloon Facility (didn't think such an organization existed, did ya ?). DarkSyd, in a determined attempt to become the most cited Tangled Banker, presents an audiovisual treat to explain what looking at wavelengths outside the visible range tells us about the universe.

As promised, some mathematically inclined posts. These posts are not necesarily recent, but are good examples of some of the better material out there. WARNING: for some reason, it is much harder to do mathematical writing in a way that conveys intuition without jargon, so some of the links might be a lot more technical than any of the links above.

This seems like an opportune time to give a shout out to two of the best science journalists in the hated MSM. If you haven't read Carl Zimmer and Chris Mooney, you are missing out on high quality science writing.